


The Titanic Sank for a Reason

by CampionSayn



Category: Eight Crazy Nights (Movies)
Genre: Gen, I have no shame, Toast, deer can be intelligent, fluffy-fluffy-fluffiness, step-parent and child relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:23:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…But we’re not going into that right now. This is mostly about warm fuzzies and Davey Stone no longer being a jackass but a subtle father figure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Titanic Sank for a Reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Twilight_Shadow_Songs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilight_Shadow_Songs/gifts).



_-:-_  
If you expect to succeed…rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns.  
-Stephen King

* * *

It didn’t really surprise Benjamin when Davey and his mom got married and that all three of them ended up moving in with Whitey and his sister like one big happy family after Davey and Jennifer dated for over a year with Davey going back to school, taking college courses and then getting a degree in management and lesser honors in stuff that Benjamin couldn’t remember.  
  
Still, waking up in the mornings to the smell of bacon and eggs always was a welcome surprise that Benny couldn’t get over on the weekdays. His mom was a waitress, but couldn’t quite train herself not to ruin anything meat related that required attention and the chance that getting burned with grease went up to ninety percent—it was a most welcome change that Davey had started after the third month of dating his grade school girlfriend after they’d snuck into Davey’s room in Whitey’s house while the two dwarves snored on the sofa _(watching Benjamin was something they claimed would be easy, but they always ended up being more or less watched by him like a grandson with dizzy minded grandparents that had micro-seizures and lost their wigs on fence lines when they went to the ice rink where there was usually a cop or physician in the area in case the two got into something Benjamin couldn’t handle)_ with Benjamin between them and when Davey woke up, he’d slung on a tartan bathrobe and felt like doing something nice since he’d had a skip in his step down the stairs.  
  
“Mmph…” Benjamin sighed, hacking morning mucus from his throat as he turned on his stomach in bed and bumped his forehead into the warm, throbbing mass that tended to suit themselves to be his pillows when Eleanore or Whitey actually remembered to shut their bedroom doors at night.  
  
The six deer that adored Whitey and Eleanore didn’t even wake up from their positions at the head of the bed when Benjamin lifted himself up, hand prodding under the smallest doe to find his Luke Skywalker looking bathrobe and yanking it free so he could go and get breakfast before all the bacon was gone and he had to go to school with just eggs and cereal swishing around in his scrawny stomach.  
  
Having her rump pulled and pushed at got that particular doe awake and she lifted her head with the usual, high squeaky coo that all six of the hoofed mammals tended to make in question or suggestion or delight or anything, really. Benjamin just offered up a lazy smile—head feeling heavier than it usually did at seven in the morning—and patted her on the head, “Just heading down for breakfast. You can go back to sleep if you want.”

* * *

Davey could make breakfast every morning, no problem at all. But making tea or coffee or hot cocoa in Eleanore’s kitchen was such a pain in the ass that he rarely bothered.  
  
“No, wait--!”  
  
And here’s why: the small woman owns, like, ten different kinds of teapots and kettles and there are two always sitting atop the stove like mama and papa to the counter section. They are both white and stainless and perfectly preserved for making hot drinks. Every time he decides to make coffee in the morning, Davey looks inside the both of them because he can’t remember which one has the little measurement lines inside, putting the lids on the counter next to each other when he finds the right kettle and goes to fill it up.  
  
Everything is fine until he turns on the stove, sets the kettle atop the blue flame and grabs the lid he thinks—HE THINKS—belongs to that teapot.  
  
He’s always _wrong_ and the lid drops from his hand, clinks at the top of the pot and he hears it hit the bottom when his mind realizes the mistake and he tells it to cease and desist like it’s not an inanimate object.  
  
This is normal domestic life and he doesn’t complain out loud, but having just finished making breakfast for him and Benny with everyone else being off to work or volunteer or—in Eleanore’s case—an alcoholics anonymous meeting to just stand around listening to other people’s huge problems and feeling better about only having problems with leaving the house more than a couple times a week, he allows himself, as he glared at the lid in the water, to long for the days where he hated just about every freaking thing for no reason. Actually, strike that; for a reason that made sense to _him_ at the _time_.  
  
“Kickle-coo-ey?”  
  
Jumping a little at the sudden, squeaky noise from behind him, Davey spun on his heel and found the smallest of Whitey’s does _(also the darkest colored and the chattiest compared to the other two does that preferred to spend their time with Eleanore, prancing around with the dwarf’s wigs on which gave them the appearance of reincarnated versions of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe)_ looking up at him before glancing over to the doorway with a worried expression in her anthropomorphic eyes. Benny was leaning against the wall in the bathrobe that made him look like a character in Star Wars, arms wrapped around him like he was trying to warm up with the house already standing in heat above Bahamas levels, skin pale and eyes half closed in what Davey connected to being exhaustion.  
  
“Sorry I’m late for breakfast, my alarm didn’t go off,” the twelve year old croaked, throat hitched in discomfort as he made for the kitchen table where the bacon pile sat atop the platter Eleanore insisted on him using so the grease didn’t spill all over anything _(eggshell blue in color with yellow ribbon stencil pictures all along the rim; when Davey first used it, he placed it sideways on the table and spun it like a coin—Whitey had a seizure from the color flashes and Jennifer forbade him from doing anything like that again; that plate was to be full of food or stuck in the back of the cupboards where it wasn’t a hazard)_ while sniffing the air harsh and strong like he couldn’t pick up the smell of eggs very well, “I’m not late for school, am I?”  
  
The doe turned back to Davey with a further disconcerted look and Davey turned off the stove, lid in the kettle forgotten for the sake of worrying for his kid.  
  
 _(He’d met Benjamin’s father and Jennifer’s ex exactly one time when he’d dropped by after the two had moved in with Davey and the Duvalls and had wanted to kick his boney white ass after five minutes of him hanging around the foyer waiting for Jennifer to sign the last of the paperwork that would finalize their divorce and ruling that Jennifer was granted sole custody of Benjamin. The creep hadn’t bothered to say hello to Benny and had been cold to Jennifer, turned his nose up at Davey and gave a sneer when Whitey had greeted him when the doorbell rang. Davey had walked him out of the door like the aloof asshole he’d been once and when he’d spotted the plastic-tits adorned woman with bottle blonde hair waiting in the car for the ex—Davey would not say his name and pretended not to remember it, preferring to refer to him around either Benny or Jennifer as Dickless Wonder—he’d saluted them goodbye by mentioning that as good as the woman’s fake tits looked, he’d bet a six-pack that they felt like shit.  
  
 _The man and woman had not been back and Davey was pleasantly surprised five days later when he was the only one home when the Dickless Wonder left a message on the answering machine, screaming about there having been deer crap dropped on the roof of his car when he and his girlfriend had stopped for gas and both been inside the station and ‘If any of you people had something to do with this I will sue your ass—‘__  
  
Davey made sure there was no trace of that call and message left with the simple press of buttons Eleanore and Whitey never figured out how to use. He had a feeling that Jennifer knew something was up, but after things settled down and she didn’t hear from her ex anymore, Davey made a point to acknowledge and prove that he wouldn’t be going anywhere and Benny could trust him to provide both friendship and support Jennifer very much approved of.)  
  
Picking up one of the slices of toast, holding it in front of the doe like solid gratitude for her bringing Benny down and probably making sure the kid didn’t pass out on the stairs or something, Davey grinned when she took it and swallowed it whole before leaving back for bed with the rest of her tiny little herd.  
  
“Benny, it’s Saturday and you should remember that since the cartoon you wanted to watch all week is showing at noon,” Davey replied, opening the fridge and finding the apple juice Jennifer insisted all house members drink at least once a week to prevent the flu—which didn’t seem to work for Benny at the moment, but he figured it was better for Benjamin to drink now than the milk he usually did; if he recalled, milk lead to cloudy and gross snot and phlegm when sick, “You okay, mini-Shack?”  
  
Benny blinked and then set his forehead on the edge of the table, groaning a little when Davey set the glass of juice on the other side of the table, pulling away the tiny plate of one scrambled egg and three pieces of bacon he’d put there but hadn’t touched otherwise when the smell of the eggs sent an unpleasant jolt through both his head and stomach that left him not-even-a-tiny-itsy-bitsy-bit hungry. Davey lightly pushed his middle and pointer finger to Benjamin’s head and snorted in ill humor when he felt that the kid’s temperature was like a heating blanket and the brunette flinched away from the touch that must have been freezing compared to his own skin.  
  
“So, flu shots are not one-hundred percent,” Davey noted, breathing on his hands and then tucking them under Benny’s knees and arms, lifting him from his sitting position and into his big, basketball player arms, “But, then, that’s a given, considering how many brats at your school had them and have still been spreading the bug around by breathing through their mouths. Bunch of savages, eh?”  
  
Benjamin smiled and made to chuckle, but coughed into his hand instead as Davey set him on the big sofa in the living room, his head hitting one of the throw-pillows.   
  
“Blankets, better pillows and a whole lot of more comfortable stuff for a day or two of TV watching,” the new referee for youth league basketball rambled, leaving Benny alone for a minute to go rummaging in the hall closets for the ottoman comforters and the extra-fluffy pillows Eleanore swore she would get around to using once the older ones wore out—which would be never—so Davey took three and also grabbed one of the waste baskets from the floor of the closet just in case Benny gave into the nausea sure to come the further along the day marched on, “What’s say I start up some chicken broth and call your mom to remember to pick up that orange flavored medicine you like more than that gross grape crap Whitey has in the cabinet?”  
  
“M’kay,” Benjamin mumbled as he curled up into a ball, barely surprised when Davey came back down the stairs and set the comforters over his prone form, stuffing the fluffy pillows behind his head and turning on the TV to the channel he remembered telling Davey would showcase the cartoon style documentary on how The Titanic had sunk for the most idiotic of reasons—that reason being that someone didn’t pay attention to guard against bad weather in favor of taking calls for the cocktail party going on in the grand ballroom.   
  
“I’ll go start on that soup now,” Davey stated once he was sure Benjamin was comfortable, ears picking up on the deer in Benny’s room coming down the stairs once the doe that brought Benny down had informed the others that the kid was sick—he had no doubt that they were going to sit around until he felt better like really big, squeaky voiced dogs-slash-hot water bottles.  
  
“…Thanks.”  
  
Davey ‘hmm-ed’ and patted Benny on the head before marching into the kitchen to fish that damn lid out of the kettle so that broth could be done more quickly than it would be in some pot or the microwave (which was completely worthless).  
  
The new captain of his school’s basketball team settled completely into the nest Davey set up for him and fell back to sleep five minutes later to Davey swearing when it became apparent that he forgot to turn off the blue flame of the stove and burnt his hand on the spout of the kettle.

**Author's Note:**

> Love the fact that Twilight's willing to provide feeding for my plot-bunnies who have suddenly dispersed and left me alone to do nothing but twiddle my thumbs while wanting very much to write some stuff other than DC comics. It really helps and I am grateful.
> 
> This also came into fruition because she published yet another chapter of her One Year to Love series (go and read that, like, now) and I was so proud-proud-proud of her for taking a leap of faith on that and coming out on the other side all the better for it, that I could just burst.
> 
> Stay sweet, T_S_S!


End file.
